Mathematical modelling of hepatic lipid metabolism

•We have developed a mathematical model of metabolic response to a sequence of meals.•We have verified the model results against a variety of data sets.•Ingestion of high fat meal causes a short-term decrease in liver TAG.

The aim of this paper is to develop a mathematical model capable of simulating the metabolic response to a variety of mixed meals in fed and fasted conditions with particular emphasis placed on the hepatic triglyceride element of the model. Model validation is carried out using experimental data for the ingestion of three mixed composition meals over a 24-h period. Comparison with experimental data suggests the model predicts key plasma lipids accurately given a prescribed insulin profile. One counter-intuitive observation to arise from simulations is that liver triglyceride initially decreases when a high fat meal is ingested, a phenomenon potentially explained by the carbohydrate portion of the meal raising plasma insulin.